Remember
by slightlights
Summary: It is almost the end of term, the end of year, the end of Hogwarts. "In the end, it hadn't happened the way he'd dreamt." (Complete! H/D slash)
1. one half of the whole

**Title:** Remember (1/2)  
**Author:** slightlights (slightlights@yahoo.com)  
**Spoilers:** all four books  
**Rating:** PG-13 / R; slash  
**Feedback:** Love it.  
**Disclaimer:** JKRowling owns Harry Potter. No infringement intended.

* * *

_**Remember: I**_  
_(one half of the whole)_

In the end, it hadn't happened the way he'd dreamt.

Those dreams were of violence: of Quidditch and battling in every way that mattered; of duels high on the battlements where the only way past was to fall; of potions gone awry and kisses that burned cold poison on his mouth. Those dreams had led to his laboriously sewing silencing charms into the inner lining of his bed-curtains, charms sealed by his own thumb-pricked blood, charms that—once invoked—would hold even as he slept. And dreamt. And, shuddering, woke.

Those dreams would haunt him even when he walked the halls at night, would lose him in the dungeon's caverns until he came to himself again, dizzied and lost anew. But his wand was always with him; and the serpent badge on his robes; and, opposite that, the prefect's shield that made of his wanderings a duty, a mere _inspection_.

This dream—and it _was_ dreamlike, the moonlight filtering through rumpled dark hair to the pale, muscular jut of shoulder, the very air silent but for the regular ebb and flow of the other's breathing, of his own heart spilling awareness through his veins—was... peaceful. And so he let his gaze roam lightly, so lightly, let himself... inspect, only tonight it was less duty than a wonderment fit to still his breath.

He'd always remember.

That dark shadow of hair hid a scar he _knew_ was there, a scar that reminded him of the lightning knowledge that had struck him, seeing that lithe figure round the corridor's corner: _Potter. In his territory. Potter, without so much as the Weasel. Potter... all alone._

(And it also reminded him of why he'd had to look past the lion's table for so many years, why—except alone at night, in dreams—he'd not let his thoughts stray in such a way: someone else had gotten there first, someone _else_ had marked the green-eyed boy for his own.)

_Potter._ He'd confronted him. Had met those so-green eyes, glittering emerald behind their lenses. Had said something sly about lights-out, about detention, had already been thinking of some creative service Potter could perform. And then, all at once, the words didn't matter, nothing but the name given potent emphasis by the other boy's lips:

"_Draco_."

_'Draco'? What the—_

And Potter had rushed to him, had gripped his shoulders—such strength in those Seeker's hands—and drawn him close; and startled as he was, having been braced for a shove instead, he'd given way...

He'd touched Potter back. Had shivered his way through robes and coarse shirt to warm himself on that bare, heated skin. Had traced the underlying bone up ribs and around to the column of spine, to shoulders' blades, even as smooth muscles shifted to invite rather than impede his touch—all the while kissing, deep and hot and tender even in demand; it was as if their mouths knew each other, as if he'd dreamed true, as if this were... _re-_discovery. The slick enamel of the other boy's teeth, one canine tilted so slightly out of place; the talent of his tongue, twining about his own; the sheer taste of him amid mint and sharp apple from dessert—

But that timeless urgency had passed; now he could map the slant of those ribs, and did, fingers splayed so that his hand was a star that fell slowly, slowly toward chest's faint drift of hair, toward the slow reverberation of heart's beat deep within. He let his own breathing linger to match, the better to remember the tempo: _larghetto_... and rested there, for some measures, until he was nearly lost in dream himself. 

_If he'd ever truly woken..._ Reminded, he stretched, careful not to wake the sleeper, relishing the sinewy limbs laced with his own: they were much of a height, and it showed, his own legs just slightly longer; he played toe to toe a moment, then caught himself smiling. Stopped. Looked, quickly, to see whether the other showed signs of waking—

Such _green_ eyes, to still be hidden in dark-lashed sleep—_dreaming? did he dream the same dreams? is that why?_—and without the glasses in the way, he knew them to not be emerald after all, but agate, layered with emotion upon translucent emotion. Recognition. Desire. Desperation. Even falling into their little death, he'd kept that gaze. 

_He'd always remember..._

Remember. Glasses. Where?

A quick scan of the disused classroom spotted them beneath a desk, upside down but unbroken, where they'd slid metres away from the warm pool of cloaks and scattered clothing. _Warm._ He knew everywhere else would be cold by comparison; yet even so he began to extricate himself. Slowly. Reluctantly. Found and donned his clothes, more quickly. And looked back.

From here, all he could see was that lithe, sleep-crumpled figure half-hidden within the folds of black. From here, their cloaks showed only their linings, not House badges; for a giddy moment he considered leaving both to keep the other boy warm... but the insignia _was_ there, unseen or not, and it'd be found.

And what neither could afford was to be found out.

They had so little time left. Soon would come his own turn to be branded, among others of every House: it was almost the end of term, the end of year, the end of _Hogwarts_. Almost. And anything Harry felt could, and would, be used against him.

Gently, so gently, he ran his fingers along the roughened jaw whose stubble had, a moment and a lifetime before, burnt a different sort of knowledge into his hand, his cheek, his groin. A brief sleeping charm enabled him to retrieve his cloak—tucking the other close against the cold—and an aversion spell on the door ensured none would wish to enter after he'd gone.

He put on the cloak. Adjusted the collar. Straightened the wrinkles left by another's grasp. Shook out the folds so they swirled just so above his shoes.

...Retrieved the glasses; and, by the light from the high, narrow window, painstakingly polished away all the habitual smudges, all of the everyday smears, till they shone with clear, crystalline purity. Not a fingerprint was left.

...Replaced the glasses by the sleeper's side. And looked again, and long, at the exposed inner curve of forearm—virgin still.

He'd always remember.

And then he bent the rest of the way: set his lips to the fragile bone of his lover's temple; and, afterward, the tip of his wand. And murmured the only endearment he knew how to give: "_Obliviate._"

* * *

**Author's Note:** This one's for Seren, for tidying the corridors; for Plu, as always; for Rhysenn, whose HP fanfic was the first I ever read; and for all the Quidditch and duels and potions and poisons. It was first posted to FAP's _S.S. Guns & Handcuffs_, by way of thanks for the ficlets, the discussions, and the digressions, and was written to Air Supply among others:  


_I can make tonight forever / Or I can make it disappear by the dawn  
...But I'm never gonna make it like you do / Making love out of nothing at all..._


	2. the whole's other half

**Title:** Remember (2/2)  
**Author:** slightlights (slightlights@yahoo.com)  
**Spoilers:** all four books  
**Rating:** PG-13 / R; slash  
**Feedback:** Love it.  
**Disclaimer:** JKRowling owns Harry Potter. No infringement intended.

* * *

_**Remember: II**_  
_(the whole's other half)_

The Pensieve was almost full.

It fit his cupped hands precisely, his thumbs resting on its spelled lid. Even through that sigil-incised crystal, its contents _glowed_: moon-silver against the basin's stone like snow falling through the night, the sort of snowfall where looking up into it felt like flying among stars.

_It wouldn't take long. Just one memory. That's all..._

He had to close his eyes against it. Had to navigate the folds of his robes blindly, to find the inner pocket and slip the temptation within; it seemed oddly light for what it was, a distortion of shape rather than weight.

Remembering would mean ruination; but to forget would be a greater undoing.

* * *

It was a cold little room in which to study. Not even moonlight crept through the small ceiling-cramped window, and the diffuse green glow of his lamp dulled its leaded colours to unrecognisability; he had never seen it by day. Still, there was a rug, and he had brought fuzzy blankets, and a small stash of pumpkin juice preserved by a charm. It was particularly good for practising Transfiguration: any investigating insects became inkwells or quills. He didn't know what he was becoming.

He doubted he'd be missed, though. It had become a simple matter to deceive even his best friends: to clatter through the common room with whatever the worst homework was that night, plus an anguished roll of his eyes that would set Ron snickering—'Better you than me!'—and even Hermione giving him a nod of approval. When he did return late, it was always cloaked in invisibility, discreet enough for the Head Girl to overlook; and, more importantly, over the past few fortnights his marks had gone measurably up. Just in time for final exams.

He had had a lot of time to study, to smother his thoughts in dusty texts, to write what seemed like metres of parchment between the time it was safe to roam the halls and the time a certain silver-eyed prefect would make his closing rounds. Time. It was almost time. Time to... find out. His quill (formerly a hairy-legged spider) jittered with it, blotching the page with anticipation gone slick and black and wet, swallowing up the surrounding words. He blotted the ink away before it could take over even more, but its stain would have to be scraped or charmed away.

And then—the inkwell capped and the quill cleaned, the parchments neatened and the texts ordered, the Pensieve set so carefully in one corner—it _was_ time, and he crossed the threshold, closing the door in a click of locking spells.

This was always the hardest part. Strike that: the second-hardest.

* * *

"How do I know the password? _Because you told it to me_."

Draco whipped back around, robes snapping against the corridor's shadows; his face was white, his eyes—always mercurial—now black with the barest ring of silver. And he all but shoved Harry through the re-opened door, slamming it shut behind them: "You know." And again, "_You_ know.—How could you!"

Harry stumbled but kept his feet, and struggled further to keep his composure. _The hardest part... almost..._ He should know it by now, what to do and what to say in order to get them through; but it was different this time. This time, he wasn't the only one who knew...

...Something.

His voice sounded shaky even to his own ears: "_Draco_. Hang on. I can explain."

"Why don't you, then." Not entirely an accusation, he thought, he _hoped_—

Draco had resumed pacing, cutting across the small room's confines as he so often did _(but did he remember, what did he remember?)_.

"You used that spell on me."

"Spell."

"Your father taught it to you—"

"He's taught me a _lot_ of spells, Potter."

"This past summer. He'd brought in a... guest... to his private workroom, the one it was your job to keep clean, because only family was allowed—"

_That_ stopped those sharp strides, for all the dryness in Draco's, "Oh, so it's guessing games now..."

He kept on, resolute. "And you met Goyle by falling out of a tree onto him, one of your mother's prize _Hesperiidae_, and he was the one who broke his arm—"

"You, you could have heard that from someone else. Though who'd talk to _you_, Gryffindor—"

"And Alexandra Zabini was supposed to be watching you and Blaise back at the family ski lodge in Geneva, only Blaise had gone to sleep, you _thought_, and she—"

"You can stop right there." Draco's cheeks were flaming.

He did and he didn't. "And you really do respect Snape, because his recipes are pure poetry, poetry that _works_, even if he's a failed Death Eater who could compete in greasy hair for England; and you have a soft spot for Sprout because of how Crabbe's face looks when he gets things to grow right; and you like the bread with the different seeds in it so you can pick them off and sort them before you eat them, and you like poppy better than sesame; and—"

"_Stop_."

This time, he did.

"...I don't remember telling you any of that." Draco's phrasing was precise, his silver gaze considering; the implications hung between them.

"_And that's why you taught me the spell._"

There was silence.

He would never know how long that silence lasted; he couldn't hear his own heartbeat, was only dimly aware of the constriction that was his last held breath. Not when emotions fled so swiftly across Draco's high-boned features, made all the more unearthly by the wan green light, emotions that—for a moment—he wondered if he'd ever, ever have a chance to learn. He wanted to speak, to fill the void, but it was Draco who'd shown him not to, shown him what could be gained by waiting—

_'People don't like silence, Harry. They'll talk to fill it up, so they can pretend they're not alone. You just have to wait and let them. Unless they know what you're doing, and then they get stubborn...' said with a small laugh, more felt than heard, light on the corner of his jaw. They'd been curled about the same History of Magic text, and though he hadn't been able to see Draco's eyes, he hadn't needed to..._

Now he did, but that silver gaze was hooded, focused somewhere past them both. The shadows evoked the man that Draco Malfoy might someday be, if he lived that long: they underscored the high plane of forehead, the set of brow, the lines that tension had carved to either side of that sensual mouth.

Eventually he had to blink, and breathe, and the release burnt his lungs and roared in his ears—

—but it had _worked_. 

"...seems Gryffindors don't have a lock on the grand gesture after all," Draco was saying, a wry sort of bitterness etched within his voice. "Let me guess: protecting you. From me. Protecting—but now it's too late."

"It's not!"

"The spell won't work now. It's been too long. It has—you had to have done it. _Right_ after. But I—_I_ remember."

"You remember." Ruination or no, suddenly he'd had _enough_ of waiting. He took a step forward, and then another, stopping only when that sharp chin lifted. "There's a reason for that. It—"

"Happened too many times. The spell. On... the same person."

"Yes."

"We couldn't stay away."

"No." And he'd even tried, early on. "What do you remember, Draco?"

"_Don't_ say my name."

He might have bridled—if it weren't for how the other boy was looking away, as if he... _couldn't_ look back at him and still reply. For he was replying.

"I remember the look on your face, Potter. I remember the way you were with me, I remember the way you _taste_. ...And everything I know, _they'll_ know." He caught his breath when Draco silently pushed up his sleeve, when he sketched the Dark Mark on the pale skin of his forearm. Where the nail had pressed, the tracery showed paler yet, and then blushed, and then disappeared. This time.

He wasn't about to let it happen for real. Taking greater care to steady his voice, "Pretty show. Especially with those muscles. But you don't have to tell them."

"Veritaserum? _Veritas_? Ring any bells? That was what the _Obliviate_ was for; they'd have to break me in doing it. Which they won't. Cut off a finger, yes—" anathema, when it came to those long, skillful fingers that Harry had tested about his own, as apt to fence or play the harpsichord as to dice potion ingredients—"But I'm too... useful a piece."

That was what he had told Harry; and Harry had let himself be convinced, had _wanted_ to be, when it amounted to that or no Draco at all; but, abruptly, he wondered whether the other boy had ever truly believed it, or only persuaded himself likewise. Softer, then, "What I meant was, you don't have to stay with them. You don't have to go when they call." 

"What? Hide out with _Dumbledore_ to protect me? My family? To give us plain new names, plain new faces, and jobs using our brooms to _sweep_ with, in exchange for telling absolutely everything about what we know? Even Azkaban would seem like going on holiday compared to what the Dark Lord would do to Father—to us—if He survived this time. I've hunted and I've _hunted_ for a way out—if it were just the dreams, that's one thing, but I _remember_—"

Harry cut him off with another step. They were closer now, near enough to touch in more than voice if he chose, but he didn't take that risk. "We'll figure out a way." Somehow. Surely he hadn't studied Transfiguration these many nights for nothing. "...But the dreams. Do you want to know which of them _are_ true? Because some of them are. That time Vector's charts got ripped in the library's back stacks, yes; anything mid-air, ...not yet." He managed a smile, if only for a moment. "We have them still, have them saved. We—"

Again: "—Couldn't stay away."

"No."

"We..."

"We made—we had—_we had each other_."

Silence.

It was so quiet that he could hear his shoes squeak faintly as he shifted from foot to foot, or maybe they were Draco's, or maybe a mouse ready to outdo its insect brethren and become parchment—and he couldn't bear another silence like the last one, couldn't help but ask, couldn't _stop_ himself—"Was it only the once?"

The light caught Draco's eyes and made them abruptly, eerily green. "Yes." And then, "I'd _planned_ to stay away, after. Give me that credit. But you found me first."

He usually did. "How did it—"

"What? You sneaked up with that cloak of yours, of course. Not to mention dagger and wand, and a scratchy old ski mask to boot. And a garotte."

"I mean it, Draco. Didn't you think I'd figure it out? Where I was, _how_ I was?" and it was so familiar, he could feel the patterns of tease and taunt—but there was something else. Something that, even as he remembered, forestalled him. "...I didn't even have bruises. The match's been and gone. Nobody's even assigned us detention together, much less partnered us up in class. What memory did it take, what made you believe me? _Why did you_—"

"—Memory? Is that what you saved? I didn't _know_. You didn't _tell_ me anything. Just—"

He could feel himself gaping. He had _never_—after their first time, he'd always relied on the preserved memories to help convince Draco, never risked their conflict's escalating the wrong way—"Memory. Pensieve? We had it left over from class? I confront you or the other way around, you argue and angst and argue some more, I show you a few memories, you finally believe me, afterwards you pour in your new memory, I point you down the hall and spell you from behind, wash-rinse-repeat?"

But the slow headshake was his answer before he'd even finished talking, and exhilarated realisation poured fire through his veins and suddenly it was all worth it; he didn't have to hear the soft, "You just jumped me, Potter. That's all. And I jumped you back."

He was grinning like a fool, he knew it, he could see it reflected in the beginnings of Draco's small, unwilling smile. "You trusted me."

"_Trust_," and that scoffed, but the smile hadn't gone away. "Just wanted to use that body of yours, get you to play Chaser for the Dark Side. —But this... Pensieve. My memories. I _left_ them with you? Trusting you not to share them 'round the dormitory, or worse?"

He could afford to look smug. "Secret hideaway, Draco. Spelled and passworded. And besides," and he'd saved this for a reason, to dare it now; shyly, "...I've one too. So you could look if you wanted. Sometime."

Grey eyes widened, then shuttered before him. "...I don't have yours, you know. Last time."

"I know," his own glance sliding away, for he'd guessed but it was infinitely worse to have it confirmed, that there'd been that transfiguration and he'd never, ever remember. But it was trust. And sometimes, you just had to leap, and figure it out mid-air, and—just maybe—fly. Or crash, because even Wronski knew not all falls were feints. But this wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot...

And then he realised that a hand was outstretched towards him, a hand made the paler by the blackness of their robes, the grayness of the stone, the shadows all about. How long had it been there? He had no idea; but it was familiar now, lean and strong, its calluses earned. He reached forward, and took it. "...You didn't believe me."

"I _still_ don't believe you."

"Try. Call it a dare, if you have to. You and me, we can do _anything_—"

"You believe, that much?"

"I'm the Boy who Lived, Malfoy."

"Diggory died," with some of that same old, glittering malice.

He frowned fiercely back at him. "And that's why I'm not going to let you."

Silence again. But, at measured length, "...Tell me what I should know."

"See for yourself." The hardest thing had always been to let him turn around, to spell him into forgetting, to send him out into the halls alone. But this time, whatever else happened, _that_ wouldn't. They'd both remember.

It was still a cold little room; it was still lit by a spell-green light, not the open sun of day, not even stars. But their hands were also still intertwined; and Draco whispered open the Pensieve's lid, and looked inside.

* * *

**Author's Note:** This one's for Seren and her 'whipcrack of beta authority'; for Verdant, who also beta'd, and who helped keep the Head Girl in line; and for Hula-rific Plu. Bertha Jorkins and Mr. Roberts were lab rats in GoF for the ramifications of _Obliviate_. 

(To see what rhoddlet did with the idea, to my great pleasure, visit her 'Atonement': http://fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=756252) 

As before, II was written to Air Supply among others:  


_And I know the night is fading / And I know that time's gonna fly  
And I'm never gonna tell you / Everything I gotta tell you  
But I know I gotta give it a try..._


End file.
